Marjorie Liu Quotes
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I can't control what a reader takes from a story.
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I think that comic books have appealed to female readers for years.
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I wanted to be her; I wanted to write her. Red Sonja became anchored in my imagination like a mountain.
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We like to imagine that women would do a better job of ruling the world - and I'm one of those optimists - but women aren't a superior kind of life form just because of our gender. We're awesome but not perfect. We're human. Just like men.
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I love writing prose. I really love writing prose. It's very pleasurable for me.
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I'm really bothered by questions of humanity, questions of war, questions of slavery.
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I got into comics because I wrote an 'X-Men' novel for Pocket Books, and I introduced myself to the head of recruitment at Marvel. I'd heard through the grapevine they liked the book, so that gave me the courage to go up to them and be like, 'Hey, if you ever need a writer, here I am.'
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Han Solo has always been - and I think for a lot of people, too - this iconic character who's the absolute definition of cool.
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Male heroes are entitled to particular privileges, and why not the women as well?
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When I first came to comics, it was, like, dudes. The feeling, the air, the presence is overwhelmingly male.
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My dad is Chinese, and my mom is a white American, and they married only ten years after the United States Supreme Court ruled that it was illegal to ban mixed marriages. Imagine that. Marriages between people of different races - now common and accepted - were illegal in many states up until the late Sixties.
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I could be shooting myself in the foot, but in some ways, I feel I've said all I've needed to say when to comes to, say, the 'X-Men.' I think I've hit the bright points, I think I've hit what I wanted to hit, and I can be happy moving on doing other things.
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I think we worry way too much about where books should fit inside genres. In a romance, the hero and heroine are on a journey together, and no matter how awful it gets, by the end of the book they'll be in love, with the probability of a happy ending.
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I think when you look at the diversity of the readership, all the different people who love comics, I want comics to reflect the real world, and I think Marvel does a good job of trying to do that, but I don't think there's ever an end point when it comes to creating diversity and creating stories that people can relate to.
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As a writer - and a romance novelist, no less - I've always found it a bit odd when characters in comic books remain in relationship limbo for years at a time.
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I don't write fight scenes in comics all that well. I think they're a waste of space unless they can move a story forward in some compelling fashion. You've only got twenty-two pages to work with. Why throw that away on a set of meaningless punches?
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Finding the voice of a character, no matter who it is - from Black Widow to Han Solo - is the first and most important hurdle for me to cross in any work of fiction.
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Women have been writing strong women characters for a long time - hello, Maxine Hong Kingston! - it's just taken mainstream comics a really long while to catch up.
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Growing up as Chinese-American, as someone who experienced racism, questions of 'otherness' are always at the forefront of my mind.
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I'm a writer and a feminist of color, and I've written complex, powerful women for my entire career. I'm just one voice, but there are many others like me.
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Timing is irrelevant when it comes to desire.
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I had my dreams, and even though everyone told me that they weren't practical, I knew in my heart that this is what I had to do. Even if it ended up being a failure, I had to make the attempt.
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Individual writers can certainly make a difference, but they are working within a system, an institution, that still holds tremendous power over whose voices are heard and whose voices are rewarded.
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I don't want to give people the wrong advice to follow their dreams no matter what, because it's not fun to be a starving artist. But on the other hand, life is short, and if you are burning with a passion to do something, then do it. Work hard, study hard at it, and don't give up.